The production of maquiladora space in Motul, Mexico: from henequen municipality to industrial city

Abstract

At the intersection of commodity chains and urban research, this paper engages with Bair and Werner’s “disarticulations perspective” through a conversation with Lefebvre’s “production of space.” I argue that this mix can provide a stronger theoretical lens to explore social differentiation, accumulation by dispossession, and uneven development and with this, shed more light on how the uneven geographies of global capitalism are created and reproduced. I develop my argument fixed analytically in Motul, in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán, as I explore the changes that the city experienced in the midst of a maquiladora boom-to-bust cycle. Maquiladoras—a type of Export Processing Zone that were meant to replace the state’s dying agro-based economy—arrived to the region in the 1980s and grew exponentially between the 1990s-2000s. With a historical approach, I draw on discourse analysis and ethnography-inspired fieldwork to unpack how the production of maquiladora space—in the form of the New Frontier—came about at the intersection between discourse, materiality, and effects on everyday life. The creation of the New Frontier unfolded within the logic of a global maquiladora architecture but was carried out by local actors through a double movement of homogenization and differentiation.